Part of an occasional series, this week’s bookshelf belongs to Natalie McHugh, her husband Harrison, and their daughter, Charlotte.
Shelf by shelf, McHugh shares associations from memorable books:
Rick Steve’s France located on the second from top shelf: As we sat in the gardens of Versailles, I absentmindedly cut off my boyfriend’s marriage proposal to read aloud from [the] travel book. He quickly took the book away and started his proposal over. (I said “yes!”)
Top shelf: During COVID-19 lockdown when I told my husband I had settled on making ice cream as my quarantine hobby, he surprised me with The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz and let me know he’d be a willing guinea pig to taste test my creations.
Third shelf from top: Daunted by what to plant in your garden? Read Landscape Plants for California Gardens, by Bob Perry. It’s an easy guide to finding plants by variety (ex: trees, shrubs, vines) or plant palette (ex: woodland, Mediterranean, California natives). Perry, one of my favorite college professors, wrote an inscription inside on my last day of his year-long plant identification course.
Are your bookshelves a window into your soul? A roadmap of your past or an aspirational reading list? Send us a photo of your bookshelf and some thoughts about what some of the titles mean to you. Email us at news@piedmontexedra.com.